


Serena

by TaraethysHolmes



Category: The Handmaid's Tale (TV), The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Genre: Angst, Bible references, Dark, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, dark themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 07:44:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13806678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaraethysHolmes/pseuds/TaraethysHolmes
Summary: "This is beautiful. This is the way that things are meant to be. This is glorious, and this is of my making, of my devising. I am pious, I am serene. I am perfect.This is not bittersweet. This is not.I preached this. I sacrificed for this. This is my reward."'Be Careful what you Wish For.' Serena Joy should have lived by those words. But she was not careful - she didn't think this through. Now, the serene, perfect wife must live with the consequences of her preaching, must understand the truth of what she has brought about. She is a woman born of bitterness, and sadness, consuming her every thought, word and deed.This is all.





	Serena

I’ve always thought the concept of dreaming so strange. When you sleep, you go somewhere. And yet you are nowhere, in that place beyond consciousness. 

I drift there, moment after moment, so long and slow my breathing. Under His eye I drift. When I am asleep, I may think of things that are entirely my own. 

I hate sleep. I hate to dream. 

My awake is my dream. It should be my dream. I built this world. 

I did. 

I can convince myself I did, still. 

But when I dream I’m not in my world. 

This was supposed to be beautiful. This place that Before I could only dream of, standing under His eye, doing His work. I am pious. I am serene. This is happiness. 

I can tell myself these things. 

 

Pam. That’s my name. I claim it, just as I claim this place, this world, under my eye, under His eye. 

 

The sitting room is mine. 

I have these four walls, and they are beautiful freedom. I can sit in my chair, feel the depression where I have sat here for hours and hours and hours and hours. My hands are deft with the knitting needles — I have had so much practice that it is all just second nature. The sunlight comes in through the one window on the far side, facing the door, drawing a line as straight as can be across the hardwood floors.

My knitting needles shimmer in the sunlight. 

Opposite to me is the true window. The television, an opening into the world outside that is closed to me. 

No. 

Not closed to me. I can go when I want, I tell myself that. 

This is not a prison. One does not build their own prison. 

I chose the colour on these walls. I chose what to fill this room with. These chairs are mine — I have sat in them all. This is my domain, this is my territory. 

 

She’s shorter than I am. That’s the first thing I notice. That will make her easier than the one before. 

She wears red. I wear blue. She is a whore. I am not. 

She has ‘viable ovaries’. 

I do not. 

Mousy brown hair frames a face with narrow, blue eyes. Her nose has a slight hook to it, her mouth a gash across her face, colourless and without emotion. But her eyes. 

If I look closely enough, I can see it in her eyes. The slight flare that tells me she is a person. She is as real as I am. 

I wish she wasn’t. 

I am angry. This is what the Re-Education centre is for. They aren’t human, they are walking wombs. She has to be a walking womb. She is not as human as I am. She doesn’t understand anything. She can’t. That’s the point. 

 

I see it when she recognises me. 

Her eyes are so expressive, if you know where to look. Her gaze zeroes in on me, and I know that she’s looking at me, but she isn’t seeing me. She’s seeing Serena Joy. She’s seeing my singing and my prayers and what I could do once that I no longer can.

I am pious. I am serene. This is happiness. 

 

The stage lights were always hot. That’s what I remember most vividly. The stage lights across my forehead would often make beads of shimmering sweat fall down my forehead, stinging my eyes. 

Chalk scented the air, that is another thing I remember. Chalk on the stage, to stop me from slipping as I bowed to my Lord, to Him. My warbling voice would ring in my ear as I sung. 

When I couldn’t sing, I prayed. I could pray for hours. 

I could grovel on the floor, I could be miserable, tormented by what I was apparently putting myself through, my failure was my sacrifice, my sacrifice to bring others this joy. 

One can’t build their own prison. That’s illegal. 

 

I watch from the landing above the entrance hall, silently peering around the doorframe, watching as she goes outside, her wings pulled about her face, hiding her expression from me. Her red dress swirls around those hips, those _things_ that belong on a whore. 

She has, clutched in one hand, her tokens for the day; meat, and cheese, bread and fruit. 

The door doesn’t swing shut fast enough. I can see the other one, the other Handmaid, waiting for her silently at the gate, wings hiding their expressions from one another, from me. It shuts before I can see their greetings. 

My belly clenches. 

She takes it for granted, I know that. It is acceptable for her to go outside, even if it is to just get food for the household. She is allowed to walk down those streets, past those guards, she is permitted to wander through the supermarket, to lay her fucking hands on those round fruits and cool vegetables, to touch the flesh that should be consumed, cooked and roasted by women in dark green. 

I know she goes to the Wall. 

I have seen it. 

She goes there and she stares like a fascinated little child at zoo animals. I wonder whether, if she could, she would pick up a stick and poke at it like a toddler pokes at dog shit on the side of the road. 

When she comes back, she is already pulling oranges out of the basket she clutches to her side like it is her firstborn child. 

Those fruits. 

Oranges have seeds inside them, sitting at their very core, ripe and full with life. Those seeds could be planted and would grow tall, and more oranges would grow, and fall to the ground, crack open if not plucked, and grow even more oranges, more trees, until a whole grove of them could leap up out of the ground, letting couples wander through their boughs, their shade. Guiding them on their way. 

My neck aches from craning around the doorframe. 

She doesn’t see me, just plucking those damn oranges out of her bag. 

As if she doesn’t have enough. As if what she naturally possesses isn’t enough for her. Isn’t it enough that she has what I cannot have? 

I hate the colour red. I have always hated the colour red. 

I wish. I wish I could go outside, and fondle those oranges, fiddle with those vegetables, run a finger over that flesh. 

 

I tuck myself back into my sitting room, my joints protesting as I lower myself back into the chair, as it cradles me like a mother cradles her child. 

My fingers are shaking as I take up the knitting needles once more. 

I am angry. I know I am angry. I stitch and I stitch and I stitch and it isn’t enough. The same pattern, the same little boy and girl hemming the scarf that I always create. These children are formed of my hands, of my fingers. They are mine in every single way. 

Dear God. Dear God. I want them to be real, so badly. So much. 

This is my time. I can do with it what I like. I can pray, I can sing, I can do _something._ But I have done everything. I have everything I need. 

I can’t have built my own prison. No one can. 

 

My lower stomach is aching. It aches so badly — it feels like someone has pressed their nails into me and are slowly twisting, twisting in like a drill into a wall. They are reaching inside me and squeezing hard, like squeezing a lemon to get the very last drops out. 

Under my fingers, my flesh is milky white and clean, soft and supple. I can flow my hands over my curves, over the padding on my stomach, pressing in. The curves of my breasts hang heavy like ripe fruit down my front, as I hunch over the white bowl. My toes curl, my ankles bent and my feet inwards. I clench my toes in the flesh over my other foot, my other heel, the sharp pain of my toenails biting into the flesh distracting for just a moment. 

I reach a hand between my legs, rubbing at that spot that is useless, now. My finger comes back to me with a slight tint of red to it, thin and unwelcoming. It smells, smells like nothingness and yet also like off cheese, or that meat that used to come in brightly coloured cans, cans that announced the meat inside would last for thirty years. All the way to the Reckoning, it said. 

I am in agony. My heart aches, my gut clenches, my belly hurts. Everything hurts, even my spirit, even my mind. I can’t help it. 

The sob wrenches from me as if forced, in this tiny, narrow room with a single window high above my head, above the cistern. I lean forwards, my head between my knees, my hand pressed just beneath my navel. It digs in, pressing against those taxed muscles. 

God, I hate the colour red. 

 

She thinks I don’t notice them, those tiny little lust-filled glances at my scissors, sitting on the edge of my knitting table, that little side table containing the only things I can bear. I wonder if she has fantasies about them, the harsh, silver blade, the monochromatic, black, ridged handles, rounded and smoothed by my fingers. I think that she has dreams about the curved pin holding the two blades together, shoves her fingers inside herself and thinks of the point that the two blades taper to, the way they can spread apart and then close again, on my whim. 

I ignore it. Ignorance is bliss. 

See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil. 

She seems to drift about in a daze, sometimes, as if she isn’t quite there. Sometimes it seems like she doesn’t even notice her own existence. 

My room is invaded. My place is not my own, this time. Not at this time of the month. The women in green stand by me. I seat myself on my small lounge chair, I try for elegance, I perhaps come off constipated. At my feet sits the girl in red. The child who fiddles with her dress in her tiny, knobbly hands, her foot pressed against that of the driver, intentionally or not. 

She thinks I don’t notice. 

She thinks a lot of things about me. She hates me, I think.

I am filled with self-loathing. 

I can’t remember anymore. I can’t remember what this is for. 

It’s almost time, I think. I think that I’ve almost had enough. I think that if I say the word, this will all be over. My power is not from association. I created this place, I can tear it down just as easily, and then this will be over. 

I’m not sick of it yet, though. I think, a little longer. A little longer then I will tear this all to the ground and everything will go back to the way that it used to be. 

‘Late, as usual,’ I say, my voice almost surprising me. Sometimes, I cannot remember the last time that I spoke. Easier not to speak at all, really. 

I wait for his knock, turning the television on. I don’t pay that much attention, flicking through for appearance sake. This is the bargain, the deal I have with these other women, beneath me as they are. I allow them to watch the television, payment for what they have to endure. 

Where is my payment? I am owed, I am due. But there is nothing. No gold or jewels or diamonds. The Lord will praise me. He will sing my praises in Heaven, they will all stand around in awe. 

This is mine. 

The television turns off. The deal we have is done. I have paid them entirely and in full. Now all there is to do is wait. He will be here any second. 

The knock doesn’t come, but suddenly he is here, standing before us. He is eager, this time, I can see that. Eager for fresh meat. 

It makes me sick. This makes me sick. 

No. 

This is beautiful. This is the way that things are meant to be. This is glorious, and this is of my making, of my devising. I am pious, I am serene. I am perfect. 

This is not bittersweet. This is not. 

I preached this. I sacrificed for this. This _is_ my reward. 

His steps over to where the box sits on the mantle are quick, sharp and short. They tap out a rhythm that I can understand. 

The key change; the unlocking. They all create a melody that I tell myself is beautiful music, the kind of which I could once make. 

His short staccato bridge tapers off as he sits down next to me on the lounge, the Bible in his lap. The bookmark is in place. When he opens it, it sits there, clean and unblemished aside from words, marring the page. 

I resist the urge to lean over and peer at it. 

‘Could I have a drink of water?’ I don’t know who he’s talking to. Me? 

I doubt it. 

‘Please,’ he adds on. It’s tacked to the end, an afterthought, as though it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t, not here. Who is he trying to appease? 

One of the women in green leaves. 

I stay as still as I can, my eyes watching him mutely. I don’t have anything else I need to do. There’s nothing else I can think of. 

I silently breathe in, and then out. My breathing creates a beat, something that I can tie my thoughts to. 

On my first breath, I think of the woman at my feet, clad in red. I refuse to think about what will happen next. I don’t need to. 

On my second breath, I think of the man sitting next to me, His book open in his lap. I remember those pages, I know those pages perhaps better than he does. I could recite verses from memory; Genesis, Job, Isaiah, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Letters to the Corinthians. 

On my third breath, the man beside me sighs, and takes out tiny spectacles, so small they might as well be redundant, for all that they help him to see. He flicks them open with a deft flick of the wrist, and on my fourth breath, he places them on his nose. 

On my fifth breath, the glass of water is here. 

‘Thank you,’ says the man. 

Is it perhaps sad that I am jealous? I am jealous of this tiny indication of thanks. 

What about my thanks? 

I am a fool, I think, sometimes. I am a fool. 

 

It is as it always is. The bed is hard beneath me. I don’t notice it, not really. I couldn’t care less whether it was Jesus’ manger or the cloud upon which He sits. 

All I can think about is her heavy weight on top of me. It pressed me down, her skull hard on my navel. It digs in, bruising as it punches against the bottom of my ribcage. Each jolt hurts my spirit, hurts my soul. 

Cradled in my hands are her wrists, tiny and effeminate and soft. I wonder how she keeps her skin so soft. I wonder where she gets the moisturiser from. 

Staring up at the canopy above me, I can’t help but notice as the bed jolts under me. 

It’s that time, when your eyes just don’t work well and your other senses are heightened. I can hear every squeak of the frame, every protest of the wood. I can even, if I listen carefully, hear the slight squelching. It is disgusting, horrifying. This act, being perpetrated so near to me. 

I tell myself that this is my disgust, that this desire-filled act is what disgusts me. 

Her wrists are so fragile. It’s like holding the cracked shell pieces of an egg. One wrong move and I could shatter them in my hands, clench tighter and ground them to dust. 

His humming penetrates the silence that was so loud. 

It jolts me into casting my gaze downwards, to look at him. He is looking away, his face off to the left, as if there was a window there that he could look out, find something more interesting to stare at. He is distracting. 

But I can see right through it. 

I can see the excitement bubbling in his eyes, in the limber posture that he has taken up. I can see it in the whitening grip that he has on his hips, the way that his eyes are darting to her, the woman clothed in red between my legs, running over her form. 

It’s like he is caressing her, lewd in his desire to touch, to kiss, to clutch and to hold. 

It’s sickening. 

He’s getting more and more impatient. And I can’t watch. 

He’s so eager to come inside this woman in red, impatient and frustrated and I clutch harder at her wrists. Beneath me, she is shuddering, slightly, whether from pain or pleasure I cannot know, nor do I particularly care. 

Thoughts race through my mind, ones which I can’t stop. They’re lewd, almost, in content. 

As if I were the one in her position. As if I were the one being filled, then having my belly swell and round with child. As if this child will be of my genes, will have my eyes and my voice and my height. 

But it won’t. 

It will have her height and her eyes and her voice and her hair. Combined with his hair, that of my husband, the man who loves and protects and cherishes _me._ Not her, _me._ He made the vows to me, not her. He chose me, not her. This is a chore, nothing more. 

And the look in his eyes tells a different story. 

I’m holding my breath. I hold it in, until it burns in my lungs and against my ribs, pushes back with the harshness of a dense storm. 

Genesis. Isaiah. Deuteronomy, Numbers, Matthew, Letters to the Corinthians. 

I am pious, I am serene. 

He’s finished.

I can finally let out my breath. It gusts out of me like a tornado, like a fucking cyclone of denial and regret and hatred and the bitter, bitter taste of persimmons in the rain. 

She has her eyes closed. 

I envy her the luxury. 

My eyes are open. I must watch the sweat on his forehead, the desire in his eyes, the excitement in every tremble of his body. Past him, the canopy sweeps above me, protecting me from judgement of His eye. Perhaps, He cannot see through the flimsy fabric. Perhaps, I am safe from judgement for my weakness. 

I release her wrists, as much as I can. My hands want to cling, the way dewdrops cling to grass in the morning. I want to hold on, have something to ground myself, or else I will float away. 

_Give me children, or else I die._

I want to plead, to beg it of her. But I cannot look at her. I cannot do more than lay here, my muscles weak and trembling. 

Her weight disgusts me. It feels like she is holding me down, pinning me in place, stopping me from rising. I hate her. 

My self-loathing rises like bile in my throat. It burns and it burns and I reach up a ghostly hand, cling to it, hold it in my hand until the burning scent of my flesh reaches my nose. ‘You can get up now,’ I spit, trying to keep any form of vitriol from my voice. A good Christian turns the other cheek. 

Isaiah; Therefore the Lord will bring sores on the heads of the women of Zinn; the Lord will make their scalps bald. 

‘Get up, and get out,’ I try, hoping my voice isn’t weak and trembling. 

Tears prickle the backs of my eyes, as if the claws of sinners are clinging to them, scraping their nails down them, scratching away at the edges of my lashes, along my eyelids. 

I am pious. I am serene. This is happiness. 

I can feel the weight of her gaze on me, the scent of his seed permeating the room. It’s falling back out. That’s a bad thing. I think. I can’t bring myself to care. 

This is all mine. 

I lay as stiff as I can. I try to be still and steady, not betray myself. 

I am Jesus upon the cross. I am sacrificing for the greater good. One day, they will all thank me for what I have done, what I did. They will realise that it is better this way, that I have… we have saved them. Saved them all. 

And I am almost finished. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I see her cock her head to one side, her eyes wide as she stares at me. Her red dress has fallen back around her damnable hips, the white cap covering her hair, framing her face. 

I wonder, for just a moment, what it would be like to be her? To be desired, wanted, by the man who promised _me_ his heart, his desire. She is the low-hanging, forbidden fruit in Eden, the snake coiling around his shoulder, whispering in his ear. But if he is Eve, and I am Adam, then this is a farce. 

I wonder if it is as gut-wrenchingly awful for her as it is for me. I wonder if she understands how much pain I am in, or if she has been taken in, if she has allowed herself to become lost to the propaganda, to the _brainwashing._ I think, sometimes, that it would just be easier if the Wives were brainwashed too, taken from grief, from pain, from desire, from sin. It burns in my throat. 

She is gone, leaving the impression of red behind my eyes, full, rich red clothing Mary Magdalene. 

The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin. Truth, or consequences. Innocent, and punished.

 

I stand in the kitchen, one evening, next to the tile-topped bench. There is a cutting board, a wooden slat with lacquer coating it sitting in a soft pile of flour. 

Scraps of meat rest on the top, bits of oily fat and scraps of bone, white and flushed of anything edible. Next to the scraps of meat is a knife. 

The blade is long, wide, and deadly sharp. Sunlight reflects off the sharpened blade, and, on a whim, I block the sunlight from hitting the edge, stop it from shining in my eyes, leaving an impression there. 

My hand ghosts over the harsh, black handle. 

The blade is _beautiful._

Suddenly, I can understand her lusty looks at my scissors. I can understand why she wants to reach out and stroke that silvery length; I want it too. 

And I don’t have to resist. I can reach out, I can touch. I can pick up the knife and hold it in my hand, hold in next to my heart, in front of my nose. I can inspect the curve of the blade, the tapering point, the shimmer of the unvarnished metal in the light. I can run a finger along the blunt, flat side, then along the sharpened side. This blade is smooth and clean and unblemished and so unlike anything else. 

‘Ma’am?’ 

The questioning voice of the Martha breaks me out of my trance. I nearly cut myself, jolting to look over at her, standing framed by the doorway, her large body closed in tight. Her eyes are wide, as they look at me and my knife. 

I lay it down. 

The moment between the blade and me is broken, like in those teenage romantic comedies when the best friend bursts in unexpectedly, stopping the inevitable kiss. I no longer want it as much, not as much as a few moments ago. Exactly like those romantic comedies, when you stop after the film has finished and you think that the man wasn’t really particularly attractive. His jaw was too large, his forehead almost Neolithic. 

‘Yes?’ I ask, not letting my annoyance bleed through into my voice. 

I am perfect. I am serene. I am pious. 

 

My work is almost finished, I promise myself. One more day, and then we are finished. I can tear this down, go back to the way things once were. I can preach, safe in the knowledge that what I did was good and right and we are finished. The thought of salvation helps me. 

But every day, I tell myself. Tomorrow, I will have had enough. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Morning after morning, telling myself that I will do it, tomorrow.  
Tomorrow isn’t coming. 

The tiny window in my sitting room lets me look out over the streets. The women in red are walking in pairs down the road. Other Wives are peering out, watching the little bitches on their way to market. Women in green wander out kitchen doors, men in dark uniforms wander up and down the streets, in the gardens. 

Somehow, they have the largest presence. These men, those who stand above us no matter what. 

No matter what. 

Because who the fuck am I fooling? I’m not even fooling myself that well, anymore. 

I stagger back from the window, trying to find something to prop myself up, waving a hand in the air, in a futile attempt to keep my balance. I collapse against the lounge, legs giving out under me. 

These four walls, this floor, this ceiling, these needles, and those tiny little people of my own creation, encircling a patterned scarf. Encircling my neck in my rare moments of weakness, hanging about my neck like a noose. 

I want it to be over. I want to be finished. 

But I can’t tear it down. I can’t even leave this place, this prison of my own design. This is my fault, this is my sin. I am torturing, everything, myself, everyone. Her, in her red dress. 

There is a cloak, sitting just in my line of sight. 

The red is shocking against the blue, the smear of lipstick that was once mine like blood. Someone has bled on my cloak. 

Something has let her bleed on my cloak. She has left her mark on my property, on everything that is supposed to be mine. She has broken the truce, she has declared war with a single wave of a red flag. 

I hurt. I ache. My womb aches with emptiness, aches with the absence of anything at all. It is dead, gone and buried, like an appendix, like tonsils. 

I hunch over it, pressing my hands into it like a prayer, wishing, hoping, dreaming. My hands lash out in my anger, sweeping everything on that fucking side table to the ground, like so much trash. The needles clang against the hardwood floor, the wool bounces, unravelling in a mess of brightly coloured string. It’s like a spider’s web, a bright web of wool. 

The creak of wood is what tips me off. 

I look over at the doorway, in my shame, staring at him. 

He’s here, he’s standing there, large hands frozen by his sides, eyes wide. I want to scratch and claw at his face, tear out his eyeballs and peel his skin back. I want to sew it into a scarf to use as a noose around my neck. 

He promised me. He swore it. 

His eyes dart to the cloak, and then to my hunched form, curled around my empty womb. He knows I know. He knows I know. 

I am pious. I am Serene. 

I am not. 

Because I can’t fool myself anymore. 

This foolish man, this foolish boy, holds the power. I am clever, but no one will know my thoughts. I am like Stephen Hawking, I have a brilliant mind, but one day, no one will know it. Today, no one will know. I am paralysed, I am lost. 

No one will know my thoughts. 

He promised me. He swore it. 

I am not serene. I am not pious. I lose. 

Mark, Isaiah, Genesis, Matthew, Deuteronomy, Numbers, Letters to the Corinthians, Paul. 

I am Serena Joy. 


End file.
